Help me please

  • Thread starter Thread starter Raydem
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Raydem

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Equipment: Guitar/Bass running into a Mackie 408m powered mixer into sony vaio computer. Also using cakewalk drum tracks.

The first two tracks are drum tracks i lay down through cakewalk. this is fine. When i record the guitar/bass through the mixer the playback level is much lower than the drum track level. the level in which i record at is also significantly lower than the playback. I also get a huge hising noise on the playback. this is my first attempt at recording and i can't tell you how frustrated i already am.

Also, what other equipment should i use or would be beneficial. Do i need anything else. or should the mixer by itself be enough?

thanks for your help

michael
 
How do you connect the Mackie to the computer?

I suspect the VAIO has a sound card with a single 1/8" stereo line in minijack, and a single 1/8" mono mic in minijack.

You should have a cable with a pair of mono plugs on the mixer end (1/4" or XLR, I suspect) and a 1/8" stereo miniplug on the sound card end, which you plug in to the Line In minijack.

From your description of symptoms I suspect that you are plugged into the mic in instead. There is a preamp on this input because mic levels are very low. Preamping your alread-at-line-level signal would probably distort the preamp and make the signal very noisy before it's even digitized.
 
Thanks for the time

I am not plugged into the mic. Plugged into line in. could there be anything else that i may be missing? The way you described my set up was accurate so...........

Could it be that the mackie is powered?

thanks again

michael
 
Argh! Are you sending the output that should go to the speakers into the soundcard? Then you might have toasted the Line In if that's the case, which might explain why it sounds so bad :)

If not, if you truly have it wired to a pair of line-level outputs, perhaps you have the line in set to too low a level and so when you crank it up to make it more audible you crank up all the noise, too. If the signal is too low it's much closer to the noise level and so you effectively reduce your signal-to-noise ratio. With a correct signal level the noise should be negligible unless you have some kind of hum going on.

What's the Line In's levels in the Recording section of the Windows mixer? Not the playback setting -- if in doubt read this article at Cakewalk's website:

http://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Lessons/WindowsMixer.htm

What are the levels for the output from the Mackie set to?
 
Thanks again

so, i read you e-mail and i have to say i think the problem lies within the volume settings on the computer. went to the link and it makes sense. i will try it. really appreciate your time. helped beyond belief. can't wait to put down some music.

michael
 
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